Archive for category: Consulting / Assessment

Smoke and Fire Expertise Puts Omega Scientist in the Thick of California Wildfire Season

The California wildfire season has arrived, running through October with the height of fire season occurring during the scorching months of July, August, and September.

An outlook report from the National Interagency Fire Center published on Aug. 1, noted a significant increase in fire activity throughout July as “fuels continued to dry across much of the West.”

Key factors such as low precipitation combined with high winds can increase the risk of fires. The risk level for significantly large fires throughout Southern California is currently at “normal” or “above-normal”.

Loss of life, property, and natural habitat is often thought of as the greatest risk of wildfire destruction. However, smoke that reaches beyond the perimeters of a fire can also negatively impact health and property. Wildfires will continue to become more frequent and powerful due to rising global temperatures.

At Omega, mitigating hazardous materials is our specialty. With a highly trained team of scientists, toxicologists, risk assessors, and other industry experts, we can assist in assessing and removing potential contaminants left behind by wildfires and wildfire smoke.

A Nationally Renowned Team

Whether it’s carcinogens, regulated metals, wildfire residue, or other biological or chemical pathogens, the Omega team has you covered. We have deep expertise in the assessment and remediation of environmental hazards for a wide variety of industries.

Among our team of experts is nationally known Dr. Richard Wade, Omega’s principal scientist and a leading expert in toxicology, environmental risk management, and the toxic aftermath of wildfires. With a long career in both research and academic roles, Dr. Wade is a former chief toxicologist for the San Francisco Fire Department, a former deputy chief for occupational health at Cal/OSHA and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Wade has also been a guest lecturer on environmental risk management at Oxford University, Harvard University, and more.

Dr. Wade specializes in technical consultation and mitigation strategies for some of the world’s most challenging contamination scenarios, including the aftermath of fires and explosions. When Omega is brought in to assess a large-scale disaster, Dr. Wade is our go-to expert. Here’s an example.

The Woolsey Mystery: Was the Ash Toxic?

On Nov. 8, 2018, late into the Western fire season, a grassy field at a Superfund cleanup site in Simi Valley, California went up in flames. Propelled by the 60 mile-per-hour Santa Ana winds, the fire quickly grew as it burned its way across the Pacific Coast Highway, ultimately consuming more than 96,949 acres of land.

The Woolsey Fire, as it was later named, destroyed countless homes, businesses, and forests. But the question remained: Did the fire spread hazardous materials? Did the ash that settled on homes miles from the fire pose a risk to human health?

Dr. Wade set out to investigate these questions on behalf of an insurance company that represented homeowners affected by the fire.

Destruction of Potentially Hazardous Sites

Destroying nearly everything in its path, the Woolsey fire downed powerlines, trees, structures, and even damaged a laboratory jointly owned by Boeing and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Established in 1946, the lab had previously been used for research and the testing of rocket engines associated with the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs; it had served as a site for testing nuclear-powered space vehicles and sodium coolant mediums. At the time of the fire, the site had been undergoing an assessment of radiation levels, along with laboratory testing of the soil and groundwater.

Given the potential for the release of contaminants from the laboratory and other burned structures, testing was required to determine if radioactive materials, asbestos, heavy metals, or complex organic chemicals had become airborne and traveled downwind during or after the fire.

Homeowners in the area were concerned about the potential presence of hazardous material at and around sites of burned buildings. Even the homes that remained intact could not escape a thick coating of ash that enveloped everything, seeping its way into houses to settle on artwork, carpets, desktops, and more.

Air and Ash Samples Reveal the Answer

Working alongside the local Air Quality Management District and the Environmental Protection Agency, Dr. Wade and the Omega team took dust and wipe samples of the wildfire residue deposits on surfaces in the affected areas, along with air samples to analyze them for physical and chemical composition.  The samples were analyzed for constituents such as heavy metals, asbestos, semi-volatile organic compounds, and alkalinity (pH) in addition to the wildfire components ash, soot, and char.

“The samples found no hazardous or radioactive materials in the ash,” Dr. Wade said.  “The vegetation that burned was not contaminated,” he added, addressing concerns over whether surviving plants had absorbed toxic substances in the soil. Dr. Wade established that radiation levels measured with a Geiger counter during the study were at or below background levels and were not considered to be a hazard.

A separate study by the California Department of Toxic Substance Control yielded the same results, finding that no radiation or hazardous materials from the Boeing lab were detected in the communities in the surrounding area following the fire. While the destruction of land and property was significant, the blaze did not pose any additional health risks, and the homeowners were safe to return and rebuild.

About Omega Environmental

Omega Environmental provides expert consulting services for a wide array of hazards and contaminants, including asbestos, lead, mold, and wildfire smoke. With more than 25 years of experience, our work for insurance companies, law firms, universities, construction companies, hospitals, and government agencies, among others, provides the highest-quality results for environmental health and safety, compliance and confidence. Give us a call or click on the link below to learn more.

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Industrial Hygiene Experts Crack the Code for Workplace Safety

Kumar Gunaratna never really knows what he’s going to find when he walks into a job site, but he usually finds it.

As a senior industrial hygienist at Omega Environmental, it’s his job to root out the things that create unsafe or unhealthy conditions for workers and building occupants, no matter how well hidden or how convoluted the source.

It is a job that combines the observational skills of a detective with the diligence and patience of a scientist. “We hardly ever find the same things twice,” says Gunaratna. “We have to think outside the box all the time.”

When a woman in an office building complained of symptoms she believed were related to the air around her workspace, there was nothing immediately evident to explain why she would be the only one feeling ill – and only in the afternoon.

Gunaratna and the Omega team used a small device that produces a puff of non-irritant smoke to determine the direction of the air flow near her cubicle and discovered that the woman occupied the only part of the room that was negatively pressured. Gunaratna tracked the flow of air to an adjacent vacant office where, just as you might expect in a great detective story, the walls had been covered in code.

The answer, however, was not in the code – which software developers had scrawled on the walls with dry erase markers – but in their attempts to get it off, leaving dry erase cleaner liquid off-gassing in the afternoon sun.

Sometimes the work is less about solving a mystery and more about the collection and sampling of data.

Industrial Hygiene Assessments Keep Businesses Healthy and Compliant

An Industrial Hygiene Assessment helps businesses protect workers and reduce the risk and liability that unaddressed physical, chemical, and biological hazards in the environment can pose.

Some assessments are done for insurance purposes; others may be conducted in response to an OSHA complaint or as part of routine regulatory compliance requirements for a specific industry, like the annual personal monitoring required in the painting industry to monitor exposure to the compound hexavalent chromium.

Whatever the reason, an industrial hygiene assessment is an important investment in the health of your workers and the well-being of your business.

“The onus is on the employer to get this done,” Gunaratna says. “If it gets flagged … the employer could have legal exposure.”

Among the benefits of having an industrial hygiene assessment:

• Peace of mind that comes from a professional assessment and cost-effective solutions to quickly remedy any areas of concern.
• Employees’ confidence that their well-being is a priority and that their employers are committed to maintaining a safe working environment.
• Protection against fines and shutdowns that can follow violations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Cal/OSHA.

Keeping Workers Safe and On the Job

In addition to personal sampling to determine whether exposure to various chemicals is within regulatory limits, industrial hygienists also test and monitor for hazards that include noise, light, ergonomics and other physical hazards including electrical and electromagnetic fields.

Indoor air assessments require personal sampling of about 15% of the workforce throughout an eight-hour shift. A filter housed in a cassette is pinned to a worker’s collar to sample the breathing zone. A pump placed on the belt with a hose attached allows environmental engineers to collect and analyze the air breathed by workers and compare exposure concentrations to the acceptable levels established by OSHA and guidelines provided by industry professional associations such as the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists.

Mitigation strategies for unsafe conditions can include:

• Engineering controls such as the use of wet methods to control dust, barrier construction to isolate a hazard, or ventilation which can include the use of regular fans to push more air into the building or exhaust fans to take contaminated air away. Both serve to dilute the concentration of dust, chemicals or other harmful substances in the air.
• Administrative controls including worker training, access restriction, and rotating shifts to limit the amount of time employees are exposed to a particular high-exposure task.
• Personal protective equipment such as the use of respirators, eye protection, gloves, and coveralls.

Expert Help for Managing Hazards

At Omega Environmental, we have decades of experience in providing industrial hygiene assessments for a range of industries and businesses including hospitals, universities, industrial manufacturing plants, and office buildings.

Our team, including Certified Industrial Hygienists and renowned toxicologists, has decades of expertise in testing, assessment and remediation of a wide variety of workplace environmental health risks. Reliable and professional, and with the advantage of state-of-the-art equipment for a broad array of sensitive measurements and analysis, our industrial hygiene services let clients get back to work quickly, safely and with the confidence that comes from having an experienced environmental partner.

To learn more about the work we do for industrial hygiene and safety, give us a call or click on the link below.

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Return to Work Safely: How to Ensure Your Workplace is Safe for Occupancy

The global COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented disruption for many industries. As businesses around the world prepare to return to buildings and workplaces that have been closed for months, ensuring the safety of returning workers is critical. Omega’s team of principal scientists, infectious disease experts, public health professionals, industrial hygienists, and other environmental experts have developed detailed guidelines for reopening safely.

General building maintenance prior to reopening office buildings and other high occupancy workplaces is an important part of reducing the risk of viral transmission and providing peace of mind to employees going back to their desks after months of working from home. The following guidelines should be part of a comprehensive health and safety plan.

If COVID-19 exposure has occurred or is suspected, you should review the evolving disinfection guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and strongly consider using the services of a professional provider of microbial decontamination and sanitation services like Omega.

Cleaning and Disinfecting High-Occupancy and High-Traffic Areas

Prior to reopening, building owners should plan to conduct deep cleaning and disinfection of all interior spaces, with a focus on high-touch surfaces. While buildings may have remained largely empty for several months, employees and housekeeping staff may have entered office spaces during the vacancy, leading to potential viral contamination of surfaces.

Ensuring Adequate Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)

Make sure that heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and building environmental controls have been optimized for proper ventilation of indoor spaces. Property managers should perform the following tasks:

• Conduct routine maintenance on HVAC systems, including filter replacement
• Adjust central air distribution systems to limit air recirculation within the building
• Maintain adequate thermal IAQ parameters, including temperature and relative humidity.

Building owners should also consider conducting a microbial indoor air quality assessment to ensure health risks to employees are minimized. Mold, mildew, dust, and other allergens may have accumulated while your workplace was vacant, which pose health risks on their own in addition to the added risk and fear that coughing and sneezing will generate while the threat of coronavirus remains. 

Restoring Water Quality in Buildings Left Vacant

Reduced water usage in buildings left vacant for weeks to months can cause water to stagnate within pipes, which can cause bacterial outbreaks such as Legionnaires’ disease.  Before resuming activities in workplaces that have been unused for long periods, building owners should:

• Flush hot and cold water systems through all points of use, including sinks, showers, and drinking water fountains.
• Conduct cleaning and disinfection of any biofilms have built up in water cooling towers and indoor or outdoor decorative water features.

Infection Prevention Expertise

As part of our COVID-19 infection control services, Omega’s staff can develop a detailed, site and industry-specific set of reopening and business continuity guidelines for minimizing the health and safety risks in your workplace. These guidelines offer tailored recommendations for minimizing infection risks on an ongoing basis with preventive measures and detailed protocols that include:

To learn more about our services for workplace environmental safety, including assessments and remediation for lead, asbestos, mold and moisture, PCBs, indoor air quality and hazardous materials, give us a call or click on the link below.

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What is the Difference Between Phase I, Phase II and Phase III Environmental Site Assessments?

Environmental site assessments are a critical – and sometimes mandatory – due diligence step in the acquisition, financing, development or redevelopment of a property, ensuring that environmental hazards are identified and managed in advance of construction related activities (renovation/demolition) work.

Depending on the circumstances, a site may undergo up to three or more separate assessments, if necessary, to determine the environmental condition of the property as well as the next steps for addressing any issues found. Each assessment builds on the findings of the assessment that precedes it.

Here is an overview of what happens in each phase. Click on the links for more detail.

Phase I Assessment

Lenders often require a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) before loaning money for the purchase, lease, development, renovation, or demolition of a property. Even if you do not require a loan, it is a good idea to do a Phase I assessment in order to avoid potential environmental liability and financial burdens down the road.

This phase involves research to determine if there are any reasons to suspect that hazardous materials could be present based on historical site records, government and agency databases, review of site plans, photographs, and other documents indicating past uses of the property and site reconnaissance. Typically, Phase I ESAs examine building department records going back 50 years. Insurance and fire department maps can also be used to identify issues like abandoned storage tanks, a history of leaks or other uses of the property.

A Phase 2 assessment is required if current or past use of contaminants of potential concern are discovered, or if the property has ever contained a gas station, dry cleaners or hazardous chemical storage tanks.

Phase II Assessment

The Phase II assessment is conducted in response to issues identified in the Phase I report. It includes limited surface and subsurface sampling of soil and water. Soil samples are pulled from various depths and analyzed for hazardous material contamination. If contamination is found in soil at a depth of 30 feet for example, the investigation may continue to deeper levels.

The Phase II may also include groundwater sampling and laboratory analysis to test for solvents, metals and other chemicals. If any of these substances are found, regulatory authorities must be notified to help oversee via a Phase III cleanup and mitigation of identified contaminants.

Phase III Assessment

Phase III assessments include additional intrusive testing and a plan to mitigate environmental issues based on the results of the previous assessments. During this phase, the size and source of the contamination will be characterized through methods such as installation of ground water monitoring wells. In addition, soil vapor probes may be used to determine if vapor intrusion is occurring within buildings onsite and indoor air quality testing may also be necessary.

This phase includes the implementation of a mitigation plan that can include an array of remediation methods. Contaminated soil may be treated on site or hauled off for disposal and replaced with clean soil. Groundwater may be remediated and monitored, and soil vapor may be extracted to eliminate hazardous chemicals.  Remediation is conducted until concentrations of contaminants meet acceptable regulatory guidelines at a minimum.

Partnering with Omega: Easy as 1,2,3

At Omega Environmental, we are licensed and experienced in conducting all levels of environmental assessment and mitigation. We have deep expertise in helping businesses manage environmental issues quickly, thoroughly and cost-effectively, with a wide range of assessments, including assessments for asbestos, lead, PCBs, mold and moisture and chemical contamination. Click on the link below to learn more about our environmental site assessment services.

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Respirable Crystalline Silica: The Health Risks of Exposure

A recent outbreak of silicosis cases reported among engineered stone workers in several states has prompted an investigation into workplace exposure controls.

Eighteen cases of silicosis among stone fabrication workers had been reported at the time of publication of a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sept. 27, 2019.  These cases, including two fatalities due to the disease, originated in California, Colorado, Texas, and Washington. In addition, some of the patients had symptoms of autoimmune disease and tuberculosis infection typically associated with silicosis.

One patient who had cut, ground, and polished engineered stone for close to 10 years was found to have been exposed to respirable (inhalable) crystalline silica at concentrations 22 times greater than the permissible exposure limit (PEL) during a workplace inspection conducted by Cal/OSHA in 2009.  He was later diagnosed with silicosis and concurrent scleroderma, an autoimmune disease, before passing away at age 38. This tragedy, echoed in several other workers affected by this outbreak, is preventable through effective exposure controls and training to minimize exposures in the workplace.

Health Effects of Exposure to Respirable Silica 

The primary route of exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RCS) is the inhalation of fine silica-containing dusts. These particles may be less than 10 micrometers in diameter – less than 1/5^th the width of a human hair – and are able to deposit deep in the lung tissue. In the lungs, silica particles can pose a major risk to human health, and may lead to the development of several adverse health outcomes, including:

• Silicosis: an inflammation and scarring of the lung tissue that occurs following either a short term, high concentration exposure or long-term, low-level exposure to RCS.
• Lung Cancer: the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RCS in quartz or cristobalite forms as a Group 1 human carcinogen in 1997.
• Airway Disease: silica exposure can lead to diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and may be independent of silicosis.
• Other Diseases: silica-related diseases can be complicated by infections such as tuberculosis. RCS exposure has also been linked to autoimmune diseases and chronic renal disease.

Engineering Controls and Respiratory Protection are the Keys to Worker Safety

Exposure to respirable crystalline silica can cause several serious health outcomes, particularly in those who work with silica-containing materials, including many construction trades. However, these effects are largely preventable through the utilization of engineering controls including the use of wet methods and adequate ventilation, along with the proper use of personal protective equipment such as respirators.

Omega’s qualified staff can conduct a job site exposure assessment to ensure employers are complying with OSHA workplace standards and controlling silica dust release to well below permissible exposure limits. Omega’s team of experts can create a silica exposure control plan designed to meet employers’ unique needs.

Contact us to learn more about how an RCS exposure assessment and silica control plan can help ensure regulatory compliance and workplace safety.

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References

Hnizdo, E., & Murray, J. (1998). Risk of pulmonary tuberculosis relative to silicosis and exposure to silica dust in South African gold miners. Occupational Environmental Medicine, 55, 496-502.

International Agency for Research on Cancer (1997). IARC monographs on the evaluation of carcinogenic risks to humans, Volume 68. Silica, Some Silicates, Coal Dust and Para-Aramid Fibrils. Lyon, France: IARC; 1997. Available from: http://publications.iarc.fr/download/2209/c827.pdf

International Agency for Research on Cancer (2012). A review of Human Carcinogens, Volume 100C. Arsenic, Metals, Fibers, and Dusts. Lyon, France: IARC; 2012. Available from: https://www.monographs.iarc.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/mono100C.pdf

Neukirch, Francoise & Cooreman, Jacqueline & Korobaeff, Myriam & Pariente, René. (2010). Silica Exposure and Chronic Airflow Limitation in Pottery Workers. Archives of environmental health. 49. 459-64. 10.1080/00039896.1994.9955001.

Pollard, K. M. (2016). Silica, Silicosis, and Autoimmunity. Frontiers in Immunology, 7. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2016.00097

Steenland, K., Mannetje, A., Boffetta, P. et al. Pooled exposure–response analyses and risk assessment for lung cancer in 10 cohorts of silica-exposed workers: an IARC multicentre study (2001) 12: 773. https://www.doi.org/10.1023/A:1012214102061